19 detained in southern division anti-crime sweeps

Four lo­cal men were ar­rest­ed and 15 Venezue­lan na­tion­als were de­tained dur­ing a se­ries of tar­get­ed an­ti-crime op­er­a­tions across the South­ern Di­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day. The co­or­di­nat­ed ex­er­cis­es, which spanned sev­er­al hours, tar­get­ed both drug of­fens­es and il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion.

In the Mara­bel­la dis­trict, po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed an en­force­ment ex­er­cise be­tween 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. The op­er­a­tion re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of four sus­pects. Among them was a 52-year-old Cou­va res­i­dent who faces charges of us­ing ob­scene lan­guage, re­sist­ing ar­rest, and dis­or­der­ly be­hav­ior. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mara­bel­la res­i­dents aged 69 and 46 were tak­en in­to cus­tody for pos­ses­sion of cannabis and pos­ses­sion of co­caine, re­spec­tive­ly. Of­fi­cers al­so ap­pre­hend­ed a 38-year-old Mara­bel­la man who was want­ed on two out­stand­ing war­rants.

Ear­li­er that day, the fo­cus shift­ed to the San Fer­nan­do dis­trict, where a joint team tar­get­ing il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion car­ried out a spe­cial­ized raid be­tween 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Per­son­nel from the South­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force Ar­eas West and East part­nered with Im­mi­gra­tion En­force­ment Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers and the Ca­nine Unit.

The con­tin­gent de­scend­ed up­on two apart­ment build­ings lo­cat­ed on Coop­er Street. Dur­ing the search of the premis­es, au­thor­i­ties dis­cov­ered 15 Venezue­lan na­tion­als who were re­sid­ing in the coun­try with­out le­gal sta­tus. All 15 in­di­vid­u­als were im­me­di­ate­ly de­tained and processed by im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties.

South­ern Di­vi­sion Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Aaron Gar­cia praised the seam­less col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the spe­cial­ized po­lice units and ex­ter­nal agen­cies. Gar­cia not­ed that these struc­tured sweeps are part of an on­go­ing, height­ened strat­e­gy to clamp down on lo­cal­ized crime and un­reg­u­lat­ed en­try in­to the re­gion.

The four lo­cal sus­pects are ex­pect­ed to face a mag­is­trate ear­ly this week, while the im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue their pro­cess­ing of the 15 for­eign na­tion­als for repa­tri­a­tion.